School networks and electrical equipment damage

[DJ Delorie]

> The connectivity engineer's best bet is that a lightening bolt landed
> at the school or nearby, and that this caused a power surge on the
> phone line. This surge passed through the ADSL modem, server, switch,

This sounds remarkably plausable to me ;-)

I've had hardware problems due to lightning strikes in the USA - years
ago, I lost an ethernet hub due to a surge on a 10base2 cable, from a
strike a block away.  I've seen modems and printers fried from
lightning surges - anything with a long cable becomes a transformer.
Recently, I've lost phone service because the lightning protectors got
fried my the house-side box (normally they self-reset).

Every phone termination point (the telco box on the side of your
house) in the USA has lightning protection in it (or at least should
;).  If that's not the case for other countries, at least cheap surge
protectors should be used on anything with a phone wire connected to
it.